Received some disappointing news from Apple Store guy today...I wanted to know if the Apple Store will sell 27" iMacs that have the upgraded 2GB vid card, and 768 SSD's, when they come out in Dec. He said the Apple Stores traditionally only sell baseline iMacs, and that I'd have to go BTO from the website. He said the only thing they would upgrade at the stores are RAM

1) Has anyone purchased an iMac with upgraded components, in the past?
2) If BTO is the only way to get the upgraded components, is 4 weeks turnaround accurate?

Received some disappointing news from Apple Store guy today...I wanted to know if the Apple Store will sell 27" iMacs that have the upgraded 2GB vid card, and 768 SSD's, when they come out in Dec. He said the Apple Stores traditionally only sell baseline iMacs, and that I'd have to go BTO from the website. He said the only thing they would upgrade at the stores are RAM

1) Has anyone purchased an iMac with upgraded components, in the past?
2) If BTO is the only way to get the upgraded components, is 4 weeks turnaround accurate?

Thanks

As far as I know, brick and mortar Apple stores have never sold BTO machines ever. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken. However, they can ship your BTO mac (ordered through Apple Online store) to the brick and mortar store for Personal Pickup though.

To answer your first question, I have always purchased my Macs as BTO through the online Apple store. If you live in the US, you can also order BTO Macs though popular authorized online retailers such as Mac Mall and J&R, so the Apple Online store is not your only choice.

No problem! I have ordered through J&R before and it was a smooth transaction. Felt like ordering from Apple directly. Great service and great condition. I opted for free ground shipping, so from NY to CA took 1 week exactly.

J&R offers a number of various configurations, but definitely not the same number of extensive configurations from doing it at the Apple store since you can mix and match many more options. For example, if you wanted to swap out the Magic Mouse with a Magic Trackpad, you may not have a choice. It just depends on what kind of configurations J&R chooses to sell.

One great thing is, if you don't live in NY, you won't get charged sales tax.

Heres an interesting to note when ordering from MacMall. When you purchase a BTO through MacMall it is actually the MacMall team here within the US that actually does the building of your specced computer. However when you purchase from the Apple Online Store it always will come directly to you from China. I thought this was quite interesting when I first ordered a BTO iMac from MacMall.

it was around the same build time as if it was being built in China, around 3 or 4 days before the ship day which is normally the day after. They do the building in a Memphis, TN warehouse all right here in the US and surprisingly you it looks as if it it came directly from China but it's all done right here in the US.

I no longer have it anymore but I am positive it was made right here in the US which is what was real surprising to me. I even spoke to the actual people/Dept. of the folks at the Memphis factory who does the building. Basically it started out as me wanting a iMac with an i7 in it and being Apple had already released the new ones which made it impossible to get the older units with the higher end processor. However MacMall still had the older units available and with all the same options the Apple Online Store offered + more. I asked prior to ordering how was this possible for me to have the dated machine with the higher-end processor that I had known would only be possible to obtain directly from Apple direct. Well the rep had told me that they actually have a facility right here in the US that does it. I figured he was probably just thinking that or was miss-informed. However this was not so when I had got the computer and it had a smudge on the backside of the glass and I wanted it replaced, and also wanted to upgrade the ram and HDD being it was going back due to the smudge. While it took some days and within that time I had asked if there was a way to contact the Dept. or facility that was doing the upgrades that I was requesting. Well this is when I was provided with the phone number and had a breif chat with them and how they do things. And as mentioned it won't come from where the other MacMall computers come from which is also here within the US but their BTO's all come from Memphis, TN vs the other US state the pre-configured models come from when purchasing from the MacMall.

Wow, that sounds promising! I like one week turnaround vs. 4 week turnaround, which is what the Apple Store rep told me...The only problem is if Apple offers the usual $200 Student Discount, it would be hard not to take that offer. I'm assuming MacMall probably doesn't offer a discount?